I'M DEAD BORED.
I begin to understand how vast this industry can be and i'm just one person that have the ambition to dream big but there's just so many things, so may opportunities, so many more things to learn. After a one full month, no one brief to me on how the advertising agencies work. What team do you have or what do you have to do day by day. I think I get out most of it is from Peter. He is a copywriter in our agency and he has just worked for 5 years as a copywriter and just almost a month here in JWT. He told me that a copywriter, you can get all sorts of things to do. From generating ideas about a particular campaign to a simple finding pictures for a presentation. I guess it's not that simple, I think more like proof reading or writing taglines. For me, when Hasnah gave me the chance to think about the Line campaign, that was the most interesting one I've ever gotten this internship. Past few weeks of doing nothing, i only got to write simple taglines, proof reading and writing descriptions for an ad. And the worst part is, I don't receive any feedback for the work i've done.
The interns so far, there's Nadira, Willy, Gabbie, Su Ann, Lillian, Adib, Lee and me. Su Ann just finished her internship for a month. It was great to have her around for that past month. We hang out that day before her last day of internship, it was really nice catching up with her. She's always hyper .fullstop. Anyway, the other interns are really nice people. It's really nice to hang out with them, either having lunch everyday at the food court or just talking on random stuffs in office. A lot of my friends come up to me and ask what does a copywriter do and honestly, I don't really understand it nor how the advertising agency works. You have so many links like the production house, clients, the creative team and the accounts team, ads printing and other things. Seriously, that day when i was having a conversation with mum and brother. I can't understand how it works. It just makes me realise like I really need to learn about business or something in the lines of finance or accounting to work if I ever wanted to become an entrepreneur. I believe this is actually really important not just being creative.
I find like if you're being creative, you need more or less a bit of a knowledge of business and how it works. Not just doing one specific thing, you have to sometime branch out to learn more things. I would love to become an entrepreneur in the future. Start-up a company and work the way up the ladder and one day become successful of that one company. I can't see myself working for someone else. I just need the experience and see where it takes. I still have a dilemma with where should I be because I haven't try working in Australia and maybe the stakes are higher there. I can say that the working experience here in Kuala Lumpur isn't really the way I want to be in. I want to have the freedom to explore ideas, to explore the chance of taking risk. I find myself very isolated with what I can do. I know being an intern, maybe i'm just far fetching my goals but seriously, that's what i'm thinking. Being an intern, I guess you somewhat know what you want and where you want to be. I don't want to stay in the office and not doing anything, even if I'm doing anything at all, I want to be in groups discussing, communicating, I want to be using my brain constantly thinking.
Anyway, I'm currently working on a movie script and it's going good. I'm just stuck sometimes. Many things that are going on my mind with what I want to do with my time, thinking of ideas on the start-up and researching on copywriting. I always want to be working my brain on something and not just do nothing. I cannot do nothing. Even if i'm sitting around, I want to be thinking about movies. Imagine three weeks not doing anything in the office, I even finish my MoMU stuff, and i'm just out of things to do. Well at least the script is making me busy now. Anyway mum says that if in the next two weeks, if there's still nothing much left to do, I might as well fire my own self after the Chinese New Year and spend more time in Ipoh. Sounds good to me, I can hang out more, I can do the things I wanted to do when I'm back that is to play more badminton, record more songs and film more videos, read more books, watch more movies and just spend my time with the family as much as I can. If not at work, you're just being there from 10 to 6 trying to find something to do and I'm facing the laptop the whole entire day. That's why I've been blogging a lot because I can find the time to just write and write the whole day. Imagine me writing all this long blogs almost twice as much as the essays i'm writing for a subject in a semester. I guess work is not that bad anymore because I can spend that time to actually sit down and write and just continue writing. I've been writing so much that even now I write scripts and blogs are longer than ever. I guess it has its pros and cons.
Ranting part (Ye Be Warned but heck, it's just opinions)
Other than that, I'm just going to be a critic here for awhile. My boss, never sit with me one on one and ask about it, tell the other collegues that hey, they are not my 'minions', not to say minions is a mean way of saying, because it would be nice to include the interns as part of the minions. We are learning as well even though it's for 3 months. I never go to briefs, I never go to meetings even the casual ones, I never go to lunch with them. Hey, understand this, this is my first time doing an internship, I'm not experienced, I don't know how to approach people, I'm not that kind of a person, at least if you're the boss who hired me, shouldn't you be asking these questions first so that you understand me better and say hey, okay, next time i'll call you and once I do, i'm comfortable when you come and ask me because we are understanding now, we have at least know each other a bit better. First two weeks, I've been asking for work from everyone. Peter is the best. He said that he would be give me work when he has one. He does everytime and most of the time he doesn't really get much work. He would surf the sites for videos and maybe watch his own tv series. I don't know but hey, at least he is nice. Ravi is nice when you are talking to him, other than that, he is a little bit weird sometimes. Hey, at least when he gives me work, he told me to have fun with it, to go all out and just try my best and just have a good time with it. My boss doesn't do that. I don't even know whether do I actually have a boss. It's quite scattered sometimes. Like I don't know who I answer to. Imagine coming into work for the 4th week, people still ask me and say are you the copywriter when they already send out my details to every colleague in this office.
I say there's a need for a change in the perspectives of these people about interns and how they handle interns. I think this is also another interesting topic to talk about. If I ever have a company of my own, I make sure my interns are getting the best out of everything. If they want to accept interns, you better know how to handle them. Don't just let them sit by the table doing anything, everyday come in go out and there is nothing to learn. One thing I don't understand is this, one of the colleague say that if there is nothing to do we should build our port folios and do something about it. Come on, what is the purpose of this internship, yes it is to build our portfolio but not on our previous projects, it's about extending our portfolios with other projects, other clients, other ads that we can work on. If there is no work for us to do, you can always give us something that we can come up with and later it may be something for the company. Design the freaking website, it's so so bad. Build on the social media, start up something, work with the strategic planning interns and do research, have group discussions and do something.
DO SOMETHING.
Seriously, i'm not even proud getting myself to blog or to find something to do like MoMU stuff or even writing script. I should be saying oh man, there's so much work to do, I feel like there's so much that I need to manage and learn the management of time. Rather finding work to do. It gives me more direction, more goals to achieve, more things to come up with. Like I said I really like the Line campaign because we can talk about it in groups and just generate ideas on it.Look, I'm not saying that interning at ads agencies are bad. They are good when there's something to do, it's really fun but when there's nothing to do, it shouldn't be nothing to do. Only then should we come up with something to do. Not most of the time, leaving us interns not having a good time during the internship. It just makes me feel so cheated and so discriminated and i'm not saying i'm blaming the whole system in terms of our country. Im not defining this company based on that, I'm based on the management of the company works. Imagine first two weeks when they have the W.I.P, a codename something for a big meeting for all the staff on mondays, only then the executive director come up to everybody and say we should be more organised and do ourselves a favour and work together more. JWT is a big company and it should have been established long ago how the company should work. I find that you should be able to know how its run and not let an intern to tell you how it's going to run. It's all about initiatives and management. I deserve something better but well, there's always a saying that you never know until you experienced it. So now i'm experiencing it, and there's a need for a change.
And indeed change will come my brother :) Cheer up la...
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